Lenovo IdeaPad Tablet A1
Today, Lenovo announced its 7-inch IdeaPad Tablet A1 at a very attractive price of $199. No one really needs a tablet, but I have to say that everyone in my family enjoys our iPad and the various Android tablets that have come through our home over the last year. We use our tablets to browse the web, check email, watch Netflix movies, play games and video chat with family and friends—all the reasons we bought a netbook for our daughter a couple of years ago. And now, with prices dropping below $200 for capacitive touchscreen tablets, the tablet becomes an interesting alternative to the netbook.
Coby Kyros MID7022-4G
I mention capacitive touchscreens because that’s the speedy, light-touch technology we’ve come to expect from touch devices. Resistive touchscreen tablets have been available for a while, but are more sluggish and require a firm touch.
With this in mind, there are two tablets to consider in the sub-$200 range: the Lenovo IdeaPad Tablet A1 ($199) and the Coby Kyros MID7022-4G ($179 on BestBuy.com). Both run Android 2.3 Gingerbread, are about half an inch thick, weigh about 14 ounces, have front-facing 0.3MP cameras for video chat, a microSD slot for expanded storage and run on 1Ghz Cortex A8 single-core processors. The Coby Kyros MID7022-4G comes in black and has 4GB of onboard memory and an 800 x 480 7-inch display. The Lenovo IdeaPad A1 has a 1024 x 600 7-inch display, 2GB of onboard memory and will come in black, white, blue and pink.
Acer Iconia A100
For a low-cost option with the latest technology, check out the Acer Iconia Tab A100
, Only 2 Gig though and not the previously expected 8 Gig? wow!
From Jackie @ freeismylife on September 01, 2011 :: 3:09 pm
I loved your post and it got me to thinking that tablets with dataplans may take over from smartphones. Everyone enjoys checking mail and reading ebooks on a tablet more than doing the same tasks on a smartphone. 4G tablets on Verizon can get a 2G dataplan for $20 per month. I am seriously thinking of getting a tablet with a dataplan for everyday use and going back to a traditional cell phone for making phone calls. I use my smartphone everyday to read mail and watch movies and read ebooks, but only used 28 of my 300 phone minutes last month.
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